Beyond Bhuttos and Sharifs

Region

For centuries, patients under ailment have placed their trust in doctors; Voyagers have relied upon Sea Captains to steer the rocking ship out of the stormy ocean, and here dare I go against the Beckettian concept of existential self-reliance, for I believe that man is always waiting for Godot (a small god).

Man has always had a natural propensity towards following a “leader”.

Leader. As a Pakistani, that word sounds alien to me— an amorphous linguistic entity that we barely seem to understand. Unfortunately, our understanding of what and how a leader should be, seems to have been lost somewhere in a myriad of unprepossessing rhetoric, hollow slogans, and redundant political ideology that deserves nothing but to be trashed in the dustbin. What we have as leaders now is a merry-band of thugs and charlatans, while the country is mired deep in lawlessness, hunger and chaos. Sometimes one wonders as to why Pakistan struggles to find its feet and to develop into a great nation. Notwithstanding democracy or martial laws, we have carved a system of our own in which the mighty ‘haves’ rule over the frail and weak ‘have nots’. In which the wretched masses continue to experience unabated misery and destitution. In which the rich landlords, industrialists, people with dubious and ill-gotten wealth who, except for suppressing and tormenting poor wretched souls, and who have not done anything worthwhile in their entire lives, continue to wield power in one form or another. A win in the election fetches them the badge of so-called leader.

The dearth of leadership in Pakistan is not a recently-born issue. The vacuum in political leadership developed in the country with the death of Quaid—the man who was the emblem of all that leadership is supposed to entail: Sincerity, Steadfastness, Selflessness, Vision, and a Sense of Ownership; besides, being a great ‘uniter’, for the most significant attribute of a genuine leader is his ability and quality to bring people together as one nation. And this quality alone draws a line between a genuine leader and a politician. The latter has a propensity to divide rather unite the people. With the death of the Quaid the country plunged into the ethnic and ideological cesspool and which subsequently became a handy tool in the hands of the politicians –a phenomenon that still prevails at large.

Pakistan’s political history, after the death of the Quaid, is seen colored by four distinctive phases, and the last phase is the one we continue to experience. These four phases have not just been about the ludicrous game of the powerful lobbying against each other, but also about personal vendettas overshadowing national interests. The commonality between all four phases is that the country’s greater good has always become secondary to the selfish interests of the proverbial vultures, disguised as leaders.

For decades, brooding political inconsistency has deprived Pakistan of a self-sustaining economic model, which could rely on itself without the support of US-sent aid, resulting in menacing political polarization, and a developmental paradox where the rich are getting richer, and the poor, poorer, with each passing day.

Phase 1: 1948-1957

Unlike India, which had Jawaharlal Nehru supervising the state’s affairs for a good 17 years, Pakistan was orphaned a year after its birth. Frail and struggling, with no economic sectors, and feebly surviving without a constitution till 1956.

I do not revere Liaquat Ali Khan as an equivalent, or a substitute to Quaid, for in order to lead, one must just not have clean hands, and a sincere heart, but also an able-bodied vision—something that Liaquat, in my eyes, lacked severely. The period of Ghulam Muhammad, Khwaja Nazimuddin, Iskander Mirza, in the absence of a constitutional umbrella, fueled by ethnicity and cultural differences, remained a battle ground to win hegemony over each other. It was a period of uncondoned puerile political adventures bringing the country to a stagnant, stale and sordid existence. Resultantly Punjab emerged as the power house alienating the Eastern wing. At one-point relations among the provinces within West Pakistan turned rancorous.

Phase 2: 1958 to 1977

I am personally a critic of Ayub Khan, for the event of his coming into power ultimately orchestrated the fall of Dhaka years later, however, his socio-economic policies reflected a strong vision that let Pakistan progress in the comity of nations. With Ayub Khan’s Trickle-Down Model, the much talked about 22 families governing Pakistan’s industry uplifted the economic sectors, which—in my eyes—was not a bad thing to do. The private sector blossomed, paving way for economic development and employment opportunities. So much so, that IMF had put Pakistan’s economic model as an example for South Korea to follow, back in the day.

Fast-forward to Bhutto, who overthrew Ayub’s capitalist model, as soon as he came into power, replacing it with a consequential Nationalization programme; Nationalizing private companies across the board in Pakistan, crippling the industry that had matured, and was thriving by now. He was the pioneer of playing politics on the hoof. His advent into the mainstream politics buried all vestiges of decency and civilized norms of politics. He was an antithesis to a ‘Uniter’ the quality that distinguishes a leader from a politician. The United States of America, as we see it today, wouldn’t have existed in the present form, had their founding fathers acted like politicians. Bhutto was neither a leader nor a politician. His tunnel vision resulted in breaking the country up, besides, his half-baked romance with socialistic ideas alongside his vows and hyperbole for universal pan Islamic resurgence turned out to be the biggest delusion that the nation is still unable to undo. He wanted to have everything on his plate.

Phase 3: 1979-1988

Zia’s era was a dark age: A quagmire spreading in Pakistan’s very veins; where books were replaced with Kalashnikovs, and a tyrannical, sadomasochist ruled over the country for eleven years, focusing on hypocritical means to prolong his presidency. He was anything, but a leader. This was the pinnacle of religious bigotry, rise of hypocritical piety and ‘holier than thou’ culture where spurious mullahs trying to force their medieval utopia on people.

Having said that, I feel one cannot define a “Leader” in absolute terms. I firmly believe that a leader is someone born with superior talents of wit, diplomatic and political vision, rationality, and of course, the power to attract people, however, there is always an organic process of evolution that precedes his constitution. Pre-WWII, Hitler was a leader for his people. His oratory skills are, to date, unparalleled. However, he was a dictator by nature. An utter lack of vision and diplomatic acumen is what led to his downfall. He was driven by impulse, and not by reason. So much so, that looking back at the way he functioned, it almost becomes forgettable sometimes, that he was actually a product of democracy.

This is chiefly why we need to understand that for any country, the definition of leadership cannot be a tyrannical, hard-stone-set one. One could very much hail from the grassroots, and be democratically elected, yet not be fit to lead.

Phase 4: 1988-2021

The period from 1988 to 1999 following the period of Zia; the musical chairs between Benazir Bhutto and Sharif, further transformed politics giving it an ethnocultural veneer, while corruption was given carte blanche. Benazir represented a dynastic shift from father (a feudal lord) to daughter, while Nawaz Sharif represented the industrial elite propped by Zia. This slowly gave birth to a mafia-type political culture, where laws and rules were small obstacles. Whoever was there controlling the country had always fallen at the hurdle of corruption. Each party hailed to be the much-awaited harbinger of change but when in power, all their energies were concentrated on mudslinging at each other, and increasing their individual sociopolitical spheres of influence instead of giving Pakistan a self-sustaining economic and strong diplomatic framework to function. This also allowed charlatans and swindlers, who knew the art of false promises and fraudulent assurances to enter into the arena. Outright corruption ruled the roost. So much so, that now one feels that there may be a dormant kleptomaniac gene in most of us just waiting for the right moment to surface. This period saw Pakistan slowly consumed by the games that these so-called leaders played with pertinacious continuity.

The Musharraf Saga

On the other hand, Musharraf, who came into power as a result of a coup, proved to be far better administrator and a ‘leader’ than the Bhuttos and the Sharifs. His Enlightened Moderation exhibited a befitting secular social policy that worked towards bridging the gap between religious factions in Pakistan, and the Consumer-Credit Model that he introduced as an economic framework was very well-thought-out. Economic expansion slowly started gaining momentum, the country regained the confidence of private investors and a climate of progression started developing.

Additionally, he had a wit that nobody could beat. With his tactfulness and strategic prowess, he made the most out of his diplomatic ties with America, all the while working to ensure that Pakistan benefitted from this partnership, economically.

I personally feel that had Musharraf stayed in power, for the next 10-15 more years, Pakistan would have been an economically strong and religiously tolerant country.

Fast-forward to 2023

Institutional Imbalance, Political Polarization and Erosion of Merit: To date, we have not been able to stand on our feet economically. Leadership deficit leads to governance deficit. Democracy as well as leadership is not possible with the hold of the family fiefdom. Moreover, corrupt and conniving leadership, devoid of sincerity of purpose could never reap better dividends. The much venerated, so-called political leaders like Maulana Fazlur Rehman are hell-bent on dispossessing girls of even their fundamental right to education. Internal and external threats plague the country, while constant political instability has severely vitiated the investment climate. Be it Human Development, Accountability, Perception, or Human Security Index, Pakistan’s performance is alarmingly abysmal in all social indicators.

It’s high time we question our so-called leaders and their vision that has brought Pakistan to its knees. How come feudal lords have turned into capitalistic giants; their empires growing by the minute, while aam aadmi is forced to commit suicide. It’s high time we question the policy framework that synthetic leaders like Ishaq Dar have been designing, which has tightened the financial stranglehold around Pakistan’s neck. It’s high time we question what qualifies Maryam Nawaz—a person who has never worked one hour in her entire life—to call herself a leader in this country. It’s also time to question Pakistan Peoples Party’s hollow slogans, for I see no egalitarianism being practiced by either of these parties where Maryam and Bilawal have superseded all deserving people much, much senior to them. It’s high time we stop branding vultures, and opportunists as leaders, for what they are selling has been rejected as Crony Capitalism and Protectionism, and deserves to be junked in the trash bin of history.

The only way forward is clean, transparent elections, and a non-interfering setup whereby the Military, Judiciary and Political Parties put aside their insular interests, and let the elected mandate govern. With an uninterrupted flow of genuine democracy, political vices and corruption will begin to filter out on their own.

Islamabad

Beyond Bhuttos and Sharifs

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Update

One thought on “Beyond Bhuttos and Sharifs”